Pythagoras is said to have been the first to assume the title of philosopher ("lover of wisdom") in place of the name sophos (" wise"), by which the sages had before been known. Various discoveries in music, astronomy, and mathematics are attributed to him; among others, the proposition now known as the 47th of Euclid, Book I. We have good ground for believing that he was a man of much learning and great intellectual powers, which were specially exerted in the way of mathematical research, as is evinced by the general tendency of the speculations of his school. There is uo doubt that he maintained the doctrine of the transmigration of souls into the bodies of men and other animals—which seems to have been regarded in the Pythagorean system as a process of purificatibn—and he is said to have asserted that he had a distinct recollec tion of having himself previously passed through other stages of existence. We are told that on seeing a dog beaten, and hearing him howl, he bade the striker desist, saying. "It is the soul of a friend of mine, whom I recognize by his voice." Respecting the system of philosophy actually taught by Pythagoras, we have but little trustworthy testimony. Pythagoras himself, it is all but certain, wrote nothing, and the same seems to have been the case with his immediate successors; we are therefore, in endeavoring to form an idea of the Pythagorean philosophy, obliged to rely almost entirely on the compilations of later writers (mainly Diogenes Latrtius, and the Neo-Pla tonists, Porphyrius and Lamblichus, all of them long subsequent to the Christian era), who often but imperfectly understood the details they gave. The tendency of the school was "toward the consideration of abstractions as the only true materials of science" (Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy), and to number was allotted the most prominent place in their system. They taught that in number only is absolute cer tainty to be found; that number is the essence of all things; that things are only a copy .of numbers; nay, that in some mysterious way, numbers are things themselves. This number theory was probably worked out from the fundamental conception, that, after -destroying or disarranging every other attribute of matter, there still remains the attri bute ; we still can predicate that the thing is one. With this doctrine of number was intimately connected that of the finite and the infinite, corresponding respectively with the odd and the seen in number; and from a combination of this finite and infinite it was taught that all things in the universe result. The abstract principle of all perfec
tion was one and the finite; of imperfection, the many and the infinite. Essentially based also on the same doctrine was the theory of music; the system of the universe, which was conceived as a kosmos, or one harmonious whole, consisting of ten heavenly bodies revolving round a central fire, the hearth or altar of the universe; and the celebrated doc trine of the harmony of the spheres—the music produced, it was supposed, by the move ment of those heavenly bodies, which were arranged at intervals according with the laws of harmony—forming thus a sublime musical scale. The soul of man was believed to partake of the nature of the central fire, possessing three elements, reason, intelligence, and passion; the first distinctive of man, the two last common to man and brutes.
The ethical teaching of the Pythagoreans was of the purest and most spiritual kind; virtue was regarded as a harmony of the soul, a conformity with, or approximation to, the Deity; self-restraint, sincerity, and purity of heart were especially commended; and conscientiousness and uprightness in the affairs of life would seem to have been their distinguishing characteristics.
The Pythagorean system was carried on by a succession of disciples down to about B.c., when it seems to have gradually died out, being superseded by other systems of philosophy; it was revived about two centuries later, and lasted for a considerable time after the Christian era—disfigured by the admixture of other doctrines, and an exaggera tion of the mysticism and ascetic practices, without the scientific culture of the earlier school.
La addition to the writers above mentioned, scattered and scanty notices—affording, however, really the most trustworthy information that we possess, as to the life and doo trines of Pythagoras—occur in Rerodotus, Plato, Aristotle (the latter especially), and a few other authors. Fuller details on the subject will be found in the histories of Greece by Thirlwall and Grote, in the works of Hitter, Brandis, Tennemann, Erdmaun, Ueber weg, and Lewes on the history of Philosophy; in Zeller's I hilosophie der Griechen, and Ferrier's lectures on the seine subject; and in Smith's Dictionary.